The view from the other side

Dknight

United States5223 Posts

May 08 2012 22:38 GMT

My first year of my doctoral program is nearly done. Looking back, I wish I had kept a diary, if only to re-live the valleys and peaks. Only a few more finals left to grade, one last paper to hand in. These are my unique experiences as a young graduate student turned university instructor. From the one facing the chalk board to the one standing in front.

I don't often have the opportunity to read for pleasure anymore nor write absent of any regard for technique, citations, and all of the other abrasive rules of academic writing, so bear with me. But first introductions – how rude. I am a recent undergraduate turned doctoral student, living in a worn down industrial city in a public university in New England. I am a part of the first cohort of my university's new doctoral program. Unlike most though doctoral students, I am quite young. Nearly twenty five, I am the youngest in the program and technically, still needing five more courses for my Masters. Yet I would be one of the first to teach, as if a guinea pig.

How different it is from up here

But this is no introduction level course or an elective for other majors. No, it would be a required course in order to graduate and gain admissions into the Masters program: Statistics. For a major whose last math experience was probably in high school or freshman year. I was up for the challenge. It's only an introductory statistics course. With not even a seminar on teaching, we were thrown to the wolves. Creating each assignment, the lecture, writing exams, and all of the little things I never realized I would have to do. Having never taught before in any fashion, the semester would be a rollercoaster, all while attending my own courses, working a second job, and maintaining my (now limited) social life which meant so very little time for Brood War. There would be no more 4 am proleague nor even the last ever MSL.

Being as young as I was, I had even taken a course or two with some of my students when I myself was an undergraduate and had even partied with some of them around campus. The dangers of staying at my undergraduate university for graduate school was realized. Being a huge sports fan, I regularly attended those games too and of course, ran into my students. Occasionally drunk. Mostly smashed.

Well, so big deal. Running into my students. But it's still a bit awkward for me, and most others in a similar position. Still young enough to want to party but old enough to know better. As much as I had wanted to, I didn't actually think I'd be pursuing a PhD. The harsh realities of responsibility and the real world took a bit of adjusting.

Shit is now serious. The very first week of school, I attended a party at a close friend's house located right off a busy road through campus on a Friday night (all very important details). I ended up leaving around 11, having to work the next morning at 5, without having drunk an ounce of liquor, not even a beer. I leave the parking lot, turn onto the road to head back home...only to see something out of the corner of my eye. With about 100+ people walking and milling about outside, the sounds of college kids partying is snapped by the squealing brakes and sickening thud of body and car colliding. And I the driver. Just. Hit. Someone. Time screeches to a halt and I still in the car, wearing a bright pink ultimate (props if you know the sport) jersey, in shock. The typical girl screaming in the background, someone shouting to call 911. How utterly surreal. What a way to start the year.

This is why you don't drink and drive

But enough for now - I need to go back to work. I plan on finishing this and posting a few more as time permits the next few weeks. Hopefully you'll enjoy em